Tom Lyford has original poetry books and memoirs for sale on-line, and offers poetry readings and workshops in northern New England...
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TO LEONARD...

Picture
Everybody Knows.....
“You know who I am…you’ve stared at the sun”  — L. Cohen

First irresistibly drawn

that dark winter evening in ’72

by the canticle thrumming

in your deep bass

from some back parlor

in a long-ago-forgotten

farmhouse




entrancing me down

someone’s hallway…

past somebody’s rooms…

following slivers of your

haunted lyric,

the rise and fall of your

haunting timbre,

 

your imagery of saintly sins,

harlots and holy sisters--

your one-man Gregorian chant

spiraling like spun gold

from the ebony grooves

on the turntable altar

I found there

 

and before which

I lingered away the evening

shunning hosts and company and etiquette

and there… some ethereal mystery lady

some Suzanne… fed me

“tea and oranges...

all the way from China”--

 

there is,

hardwired within me,

a harmonic homing device

a gland, perhaps, that

resonates

“like a drunk in

some midnight choir”

 

in response to the mystical frequencies

of the darker spiritual wavebands…

that compels me to imprint on them 

(like the sunflower  that ‘locks’ on the sun)

and to follow, as a disciple... an apostle--

I understand now why moths

consume themselves in flame:

 

...if your voice is fire

“then I, I must be wood…”

Dover-Foxcroft's Rogue Poet Laureate since... well, OK... only 2010